The Boulder County Clerk's Office has worked out many of the technical problems that slowed the ballot-counting process in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, Clerk Hillary Hall said.

Should the nation turn its eyes to Colorado to determine the next president, Hall believes her office can stand up to any scrutiny of its processes.

"We are used to being under pressure in Boulder County for a variety of reasons, and we're prepared," she said. "We know it might be close, and our job will be to continue at a pace that ensures accuracy and then speed. We can have both, but if push comes to shove, we'll have accuracy."

Whether Colorado will play a definitive role in determining the election -- or simply add to an already winning tally -- depends on how a host of East Coast and Midwestern swing states go, political analysts said.

In the shifting Rubik's Cube of election scenarios, Ohio is seen as the most critical state. Obama has had a small but consistent lead in polls in that state, but if Romney does win Ohio, Colorado could become significant.

"As the evening rolls across the time zones, we'll have a better feel for whether Colorado is the pivot or is just one of a stream of states that one candidate or the other is putting together," University of Colorado political science professor Ken Bickers said.

Advertisement

And Colorado itself could be extremely close. A Rasmussen poll released Thursday gave Romney 50 percent of the vote to Obama's 47 percent, while a CNN poll released the same day had Obama with 50 percent of the vote and Romney with 48 percent. Both polls were well within the margin of error.

Bickers said the polling data suggests Colorado is a true toss-up, and the final result could come down to provisional and overseas ballots.

"The thing that is lurking out there is a 2000-like debacle over provisional ballots," Bickers said, referring to the Florida vote count. "If it's that close, those could be litigated individually."

Boulder County typically sees between 3,000 and 5,000 provisional and overseas military ballots and mail ballots with signatures that are missing or require verification, officials said. That's out of 186,747 active voters and 248,877 total registered voters.

Hall said she expects to have nearly all other ballots counted by the end of the night Tuesday, but the deadline for determining the eligibility of and counting provisional ballots is Nov. 20.

"If it's close, we won't have final results until all the provisionals are counted, and that's Nov. 20," she said. "If it's close, one would assume that's where the balance hangs."

With a large student population that moves frequently, Boulder County has a relatively high acceptance rate of its provisional ballots, Hall said.

The way people vote has changed significantly since the last presidential election, Hall said.

In 2008, 65 percent of active voters requested a mail ballot. This year, it was 75 percent.

More than half of Boulder County voters had already voted by the end of the week, and while early voting ended Friday, voters can still drop off mail-in ballots in person Monday or Election Day.

Those ballots cannot be tabulated until the close of the polls Tuesday, but they can be sorted and processed, with tabulation left as a last step that can be done quickly.

Election workers also expect to pick up ballots midday from many polling places and begin processing those ballots to further speed the process.

Hall said she expects that between 75 and 80 percent of the ballots will be counted with the results posted online by 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Boulder County experienced significant technical problems that slowed down the counting process in the last two presidential elections.

In 2004, the county was one of the last in the nation to report results. That year, stretched bar codes on the printed ballots caused big problems with the scanning and processing.

In 2008, incompatible drivers meant that scanners couldn't read the ballots properly. Workers had to visually inspect more than 172,000 four-page ballots.

Hall said her office spent nine months examining and improving every stage of ballot processing and counting after the 2008 election.

Election workers run tests with samples of actual ballots to identify problems ahead of time. Hall's office has developed a "rolling" process that allows votes to be tabulated without stopping the sorting and processing. Workers also have developed a more efficient process for separating ballots with marks that require visual inspection to figure out voter intent, Hall said.

Elizabeth Skewes, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at CU who studies media coverage of elections and campaigns, said the process for counting votes has come under a lot more scrutiny nationwide since 2000, and that scrutiny has continued as allegations of voter fraud and voter suppression have been exchanged between Republicans and Democrats.

So far, Colorado has not seen the same level of controversy around those issues, though that could change if the election is close.

"There are a lot of states where the votes are really close, so there's going to be a lot of attention on making sure there is an accurate account," she said. "This is an election where every vote counts."

University of Denver political science professor Peter Hanson said the good news is that problems with election processes can be fixed.

"If it's a very close election and people are waiting on the outcome, that can lead to very heavy scrutiny of the process," he said. "Most of the time, elections are not decided by margins where this kind of thing makes a difference. Running elections is a human process and there will always be mistakes and errors, but we've gotten very good at running elections."

But for as tight as the race is in Colorado, Hanson said President Barack Obama's persistent, if narrow, lead in several key swing states suggests the electoral college tally will not be that close.

"If the final vote reflects the polls as they stand today, this will not be a close election," Hanson said.

Mary Rizzuto, left, Darlieen Del Pizzo and Jennifer Harris work on ballots Friday at the Boulder County Clerk's Office. In 2004, the county was one of the last in the nation to report results. (Cliff Grassmick/Daily Camera)

Local duo joining overseas exhibition excursionFilippo Swartz went to Italy, where his mother was born and he spent the first year or so of his life, every summer until he had to stick around to be a part of summer football activities for the Longmont High School team. Full Story

MacIntyre says the completed project will be best in Pac-12There were bulldozers, hard hats, mud, concrete trucks, blueprints, mud, cranes, lots of noise and, uh, mud, during the last recruiting cycle when Colorado football coach Mike MacIntyre brought recruits to campus. Full Story

Most people don't play guitar like Grayson Erhard does. That's because most people can't play guitar like he does. The guitarist for Fort Collins' Aspen Hourglass often uses a difficult two-hands-on-the-fretboard technique that Eddie Van Halen first popularized but which players such as Erhard have developed beyond pop-rock vulgarity.
Full Story